Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Right will drop Climate Change Denialism within the next six months

My prediction for 2013 - the American Right will effectively drop Climate Change Denialism by April of 2013. They'll never admit it of course. They'll act as though they always accepted that human activity was warming the earth and that effete Liberals have been responsible for all inaction.

This is a good thing.

Some may wonder how this could happen so quickly. I used to think it would take longer myself but I've changed my mind.

A year ago I thought this would only happen after a crushing GOP victory, but since then we've seen the GOP make a complete policy reversal on immigration. We've seen Christian evangelicals purge all record of decades of anti-Mormon sentiment. We've seen a hard-right primary candidate morph into an Obama-clone, and his base act as though nothing had changed. We've realized that the GOP elite often believe what they say, and believe they've always believed whatever they now believe.

If you are not anchored to data, and to reality, then it's not hard to change direction. The U.S. military's preparation for climate change disruption (and climate engineering wars) will be tied to budget requests, and it's hard for the GOP to say no to increasingly large sums of military money. The combination of military requests, electoral defeat, and Sandy are sufficient to precipitate radical realignment.

Don't be shocked if a Carbon Tax, in one form or another, makes it into the 2016 budget process.

2 comments:

To be fair, at one time the right accepted climate change. McCain stated he accepted it when he ran for President. The problem is less the right wing as if it were a monolithic group. It's not anymore than the left is. The problem is a few high profile figures who pushed this as a sign of identity.

I've long said that one of the worst things to happen to climate change was Al Gore becoming its spokesperson. I'd lay really good odds that climate change would have remained a belief of most Republican candidates had Gore not been the poster child for it during the return to heavy polarism among the electorate.

I'm stil not sure the Republican party will move as far away from it. It really depends upon the degree this election has silenced the more populist wing of the party (which is a little more broad than the tea party) There are a lot of voices on the right that haven't been heard much the last while primarily due to the choices of right wing media.